WWDC22
But for the global developers, the protagonists of the conference, they focus not only on new systems, but also on new development tools, new technologies and opportunities to communicate with Apple engineers. For developers who are the guardians of Apple's ecosystem, these are like weapons for continuous iteration and upgrading. Apple also intends to use WWDC to let outstanding developers come to the stage and enjoy the applause they deserve and encourage more developers.
Before the opening of WWDC this year, Phoenix technology also interviewed several excellent domestic developers. Some of them stick to singles for several years and focus on the development of an app; Others already have a small team and have developed 10 apps on the shelves. No matter how different their works and experiences are, they all have the same identity: small development team.
Growing small development teams
According to the latest data released by apple, the total number of registered developers in Greater China has exceeded 5 million, an increase of more than 13.6% compared with 4.4 million in the same period last year. These new developers are not all employees from the so-called big internet factories, but many are small development teams in groups or even fighting alone.
Mystery technology team members (part)
Riddle technology is one of the representatives of such a small development team. There are only 5 people in total. At present, they have developed and put on the shelves 10 apps For such a small team, apart from product development, product operation is also a big problem. Limited resources and funds often limit the hands and feet of developers However, under such circumstances, the app of riddle technology has more than 10 million downloads, and even more than 70% of the download and revenue of riddle clock comes from overseas.
When asked about the experience of APP promotion and going to sea, Liang Yilun, one of the founders of mystery technology, said that their products were designed with global thinking. She mentioned that a complete human-computer interaction design guide is provided on Apple's developer official website "how each interaction should be designed is understandable by this system, (and) this system can be used by people all over the world, (that) what is designed according to your specifications can also be used by people all over the world".
Puzzle clock app
In addition to the design, Liang Yilun also shared that their app itself pays great attention to internationalization and the use of all kinds of people. For example, their support for voiceover, which can help visually impaired people use their mobile phones more easily; For another example, preview screenshots and videos in more than a dozen languages are provided on the page of the app store. "Where Apple can provide internationalization, we can do our best to harvest users from overseas who use different languages." Liang Yilun said.
As another founder of mysteries technology, Liu Yi added that in the app store, "you can publish an application all over the world and charge users around the world. Like our company's app, we have users in 160 countries to pay for us" For small teams, this saves a lot of time and manpower on issues such as issuing apps in different countries and charging apps
According to the statistics of analysis group, the global revenue of small development teams in app store has increased by 113% in the past two years, including 94% in mainland China At the same time, 23% of the tens of thousands of small development teams added worldwide last year came from mainland China
App store small business plan Poster
In order to help the growing small development team, Apple launched the app store small enterprise program at the end of 2020 The plan aims to reduce the Commission of app store from 30% to 15% for small enterprises with annual revenue of less than $1 million. The change of this number will not have any impact on the public, but it will have a great impact on Wang Weidong, who develops apps alone.
Pixiu bookkeeping developer Wang Weidong
"At present, in the app store small business plan, the biggest thing is to increase revenue! The power is also more sufficient," Wang Weidong commented on the impact of the plan on himself. "The original 30% commission to 15% commission has increased some revenue. With the increase of users and renewal, the revenue increased by five times in April 2022 compared with the same period in April 2021."
Communicating with users is the key to app iteration
Behind the five fold increase in revenue, as the only developer of accounting software Pixiu accounting, Wang Weidong undertook all the responsibilities of operating an app, including product planning, interaction design, development, testing and customer service. Even under such circumstances, Wang Weidong basically maintains the spiral iterative rhythm of updating two versions a week (IOS version and MacOS version).
Pixiu bookkeeping app
When sharing team members, Wang Weidong said, "although I am the only one in the team, I still have many partners", including Pixiu billing users.
On Pixiu's website, Wang Weidong disclosed his wechat. "If all users have anything to say, such as feedback questions or suggestions, they can directly add my wechat. I basically communicate with users one-to-one." Wang Weidong said to me. Among these communication users, there are many product managers, designers, programmers, etc. Wang Weidong gets a lot of opinions and suggestions through continuous communication with them, so as to help him improve the overall experience of the product.
Not only for tool apps, communication with users is also crucial for the development of independent games
Chen Hongqu and Yu Jingxuan are members of the development team of the game Yuji. This independent game created by a three person team has been recommended by app stores in more than 100 countries around the world.
Mr. and Mrs. Chen Hongqu and Yu Jingxuan
In terms of the iteration of stand-alone games, the two shared that in the initial product iteration, they will start from the people around them, "offend all the friends who can offend", which also includes other producers or core users Through one-on-one offline testing, observe their expressions during the game and a series of feedback to improve their products
After the work went online, the team summarized and located the problems through user comments and emails received in the app store, and continued the optimization and maintenance of subsequent versions in combination with some compliance changes and the introduction of new technologies such as spatial audio and image compression.
The "fallen leaf city" game under development
In the interview, Chen Hongqu and his wife also admitted that although the epidemic has not affected the development of the game, they can get less direct user feedback due to the reduction of offline activities. "Now we can't touch the test of the game one-on-one and offline. The optimization of our game will be affected. I believe many independent game developers are in this link and are more vulnerable to the impact of the epidemic." Yu Jingxuan said.
This kind of home state also inspired Chen Hongqu's team to develop the sister chapter of "rain Ji" - deciduous city. Players can recover the damaged city step by step through the process of time tracing Compared with the rain season, Chen Hongqu's team also added the MacOS version this time. They think this is the way to show the new functions in the current apple ecosystem, and they are also eager to make such an attempt
To do well, we need to sharpen our tools
In the process of talking with these developers, in addition to their own development stories, they most mentioned the app store platform and a series of developer resources. Whether it's editorial recommendation, app store data analysis, irregular developer training activities or app store small business plan, it's an excellent tool for these developers to help them continuously expand their scale or iterate their products.
Apple's official developer lecture video
Apple is also deeply aware of the truth and continues to provide developers with appropriate tools to help them show more ideas and creativity in their app development "I think the threshold of programming language is slowly decreasing, and the programming language is becoming better and better understood. What's more important is your idea. The price you pay for turning your idea into a running program is getting smaller and smaller. This is also the benefit brought to us by Apple's new programming framework." Liang Yilun said at the end of the interview.
This is true of the annual WWDC global developer conference, developer accelerators established in many places, online lectures and offline activities such as entrepreneur training camps* Apple helps developers grow in this way, and developers continue to build Apple's ecological barrier * through excellent apps. Through such a virtuous circle, users, developers and apple can benefit from it and create higher value together.